The Prince of Darkness (The Freelancers Book 3)

by Lee Isserow

  He would not let something as inconvenient as wards stop him, not when he had already crossed so many lines, and come so far. There was too much at stake. He lay his fingers on the bars, closed his eyes and tried to feel for the magick that had been cast upon them. He was not well practised at such things, but as he ran his fingers along the bars, over to where they met the stone, there was a noticeable change in the air. It felt as if it vibrated at a different frequency, and he pulled his fingers from the wall, understanding what it meant.

  Whoever had built the prison had expended great effort warding the place and its prisoners, but had invested less in warding the stairwell, despite it technically leading to something of greater value and importance.

  He sidestepped, so that he faced the wall, took a breath and stepped directly into it. Solid objects in the Natural World had no such physical restrictions in the Shadow Realm, and despite having to hold his breath as he navigated through the wall, he was able to step down alongside the warded spiral staircase until he found himself in the basement of the prison.

  As he burst out of the Shadow Realm, and fell to his knees back into the Natural World, he gasped desperately to catch his breath. He had not expected the staircase to go down for quite so far, and cursed himself for not filling his lungs more before he began his descent.

  As he recovered, he checked in on the Circle agents progress back up in the hallways of the prison. He could see them through the shadows, it appeared as though they had dealt with the prisoners much faster than he expected, and looked as though they had begun to throw them back in their cells one by one. He'd have a few minutes, maybe more if they decided to admonish the guards, but that hardly seemed likely. The Circle, from his experience, tended to go in to deal with a problem, then get the hell out and ignore the inevitable clean-up from the damage they caused. He knew that might not be the case any longer, that perhaps it might be different since the change in leadership―a change that he played a fairly sizeable part in―but if he were to be honest with himself, it seemed unlikely that they would ever change that drastically.

  He rose to his feet, and looked around the dark basement. There were no candles there, for it was intentionally locked up tight and never visited, thus there was no reason to light the place. Not that the shrouded man required light to see. . . He was a much a part of the shadows as they were a part of him, and with that connection came the ability to see in the darkness.

  The ceilings of the basement were low, raw rock and mud, as if the place had been dug out of the earth and abandoned. He had to crouch to walk onwards, and continued to walk into the darkness until he found what he was looking for: a round pool of water, barely a foot deep, with the same scattershot brickwork as the fountain at the market.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled another ancient coin out. His fingers traced around the rough edges as he put it at the centre of his fist, raised it to his mouth, placed his lips against thumb and first finger, and whispered the words the coin was waiting to hear.

  Light began to shine from between his fingers, heat generated in his fist. He kept a tight clasp on it as he counted down the forty five seconds. He checked back through the shadows to see how the Circle operatives were progressing with returning the prisoners back in their cells. It seemed as though they were almost done. . . they made faster work of it than he ever could have expected.

  Thirty seconds. The agents were assembling by the hallway, doing one last sweep. Soon, they would be gone, and as soon as they were out the door, the wards would be back up. . . and he'd be trapped.

  Twenty seconds. Shana appeared to be leading the way to the exit. He needed to delay them, took control of the shadows along the hallway, and looped a snake of darkness around one of the agent's legs. He fell to the floor, and the others stopped, turned, laughed as they watched him pick himself up. But one of them wasn't laughing.

  Ten seconds. He watched as Shana instructed the others to wait outside, and proceeded to walk down the hallway. She had caught sight of the shadows he had pulled from the walls, and appeared to be investigating. He wished it was anyone other than her. She was smart, would know that it was him. . . he was the only shadow adept she knew, and certainly the only one in London.

  He threw the coin at the small pool of water, closing he eyes as the blinding light left his palm and exploded across the dingy hand-dug basement as it hit the water. There were no shadows he could escape through, and even if he had crossed realms before the coin hit the water, he feared that he might have found himself torn apart by the brightness, which felt as though it might have been powerful enough to rip through every realm all at once.

  Shana saw the light as it peeled out from the end of the hallway, and ran towards the source. She arrived at the barred door just as the light began to flee. She grabbed hold of the bars, but it was locked tight. It seemed as though there was no way to enter. . . and yet clearly someone had entered.

  She spun around on her heel. There was a presence, something―no, someone―in the hallway with her. Yet, as she looked around, she could not see anyone else there. A tingle shot down her spine, as she realised it was not someone there in the hallway, but someone watching her from another realm.

  Shana brought her fingers together and interlocked them at the knuckles. She brought her hands up to her chin, and passed the fingers in front of her eyes, switching view through to one realm to the next like a ViewMaster until she was able to see the presence. . . a man in the shadows.

  The shrouded man stared at her. He hadn't seen that casting before, but realised all too late that it had enabled her to see him. He turned, pulled shadows from the realm around him to create a portal.

  Light tore through the realms as he stepped towards it, Shana had cast to rip the portal apart before he could step through it. He turned, glared at her. She had a look of determination on her brow, wasn't going to let him get away, and sure as hell wasn't going to make this easy.

  He burst out of the Shadow Realm, threw his hands out wide and grabbed hold of the shadows in the hallway. They whipped through the air, faster than she could react, took hold of her fingers and bound them to stop her from casting again.

  Shana's eyes were still locked on the Shadow Realm, and as he had returned to the Natural World, she could no longer see him.

  “Jules. . .” she muttered.

  That caught him off guard. He was still shrouded, there was no way she should have been able to recognise him. . . and yet, they had worked together, she had seen him use his adept, and knew full well the scope of power he had at his fingertips since that debacle.

  She felt his hesitancy, his grip on the shadows weakening as she said his name, and took full advantage of his momentary lapse of control. Shana didn't need her fingers free to cast, she was well trained in other methods of magick, and as she whispered under her breath, her tongue split horizontally, creating two tongues on top of one other that slapped and slid in ways a singular human tongue could not. . . which allowed her access to speech sounds that man was not meant to wield.

  She spoke words that were older than the stone of the tunnels they stood in, which caused spears of light to shoot from the flames of the everlit candles. They tore through the shadows that bound her and whipped around through the air towards him. The light thrashed around his body and in an instant, had restrained his hands by his sides.

  He growled under his breath, and fell through the shadows beneath his feet, only to reappear behind her. As he did so, he took the darkness from within her body, and used it to bind her split tongue back together. She vomited shadows that poured out of her nose and mouth, and constricted her arms and legs in a cocoon of darkness.

  “I'm sorry,” he muttered, as he walked around Shana, and caught her glance with his shrouded gaze, a myriad eyes shifted into one another, each of them locked on her angry stare. “I'm sorry to have to do this. . .”

  Shadows exploded into the Natural World in the hallway behind him, and he stepped bac
kwards towards the portal.

  “. . . But I don't have a choice in the matter.”

  As he slipped through the portal it closed behind him and the shadows that bound Shana began to dissipate. She cast to sew her tongue back together, and as she healed, stared at the place in the hallway where he had vanished.

  There was no way to tell where he had moved on to at that moment. But she knew exactly where he would be going next.

  Chapter 6

  On high alert

  After he walked Ana through the ritual to get to the market, which resulted in her mocking him for close to half of his steps through Spitalfields, the two of them stepped into the market, which was quieter than Rafe had ever seen it.

  The customers and traders had been evacuated, the only bodies that remained were those of the giant homunculi security guards, each of which eyed Rafe with suspicion, through unblinking black, beady eyes. He kept careful watch on his periphery, should one of them have missed the order that he was not to be harmed, but none of them appeared to be interested in attacking him.

  “Well, this place is more creepy empty than it is full of people,” Ana muttered, as Rafe led the way between stalls of various organs and powders towards the fountain at the centre.

  “You think this is creepy? Try walking through it last year, when every trader had a surplus, and was in your face, shouting 'get your grumschloft testicles here, only four pound a dozen!'”

  “That seems like a lot of testicles. . . more than any one person should ever need.”

  “Grumschlofts have six hundred testicles each”

  “Of course they do. . . And no doubt they also have three hundred terrifyingly barbed penises.”

  “Two hundred, and they're not barbed.”

  “What are they, corkscrewed like a pig's?”

  “Right on the money.”

  “I'd celebrate, but now I have that image in my head. . .”

  “You're welcome,” Rafe chuckled, as he came out of the aisle and stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he saw the water of the wellspring.

  “Is it meant to be black?”

  He shook his head.

  Ana walked towards it and glanced over the side of the fountain into the pool.

  “Don't get to close.”

  “Why? What's it going to do?”

  “Nothing, but. . . we don't know what this magick is. . . Could latch on to you, hold your magick in stasis too.”

  Ana backed away slowly, and made no sharp movements in case the water suddenly lunged for her. Her eyes scanned the surface for movement, focussed through the sullied liquid to the disks lying at the bottom of the fountain.

  “Are those coins?”

  Rafe made a sound in the affirmative as he circled the water, and looked for some kind of clue. He backed away, going from stall to stall in search of something.

  “Why are there coins? Didn't take magickians for the wishing types. . .“

  “Where do you think the mundane custom of dropping coins in water comes from?”

  “That's real magic? What are you gonna tell me next, that wishing upon a star is―” she caught his eye and cut herself off. “Wishing upon a star is real?!”

  “Please don't get distracted. . .”

  “Is the blue fairy real?!”

  “Faeries are,” he sighed as he returned from his trip through the stalls with a battered old-looking ladle and a jar he had filled with a series of powders and drops of coloured liquids.

  “Urban magick, is that what you call this stuff, like the phone sigil?”

  Rafe nodded, dropped to his knees, scooped some of the water with the ladle and pulled it from the main body of the fountain. He tried to pour it into the jar. . . and it practically leaped out of the sides of his scoop, as if knowing his intentions, and making an attempt to evade capture.

  “Did the water just―”

  “Jump out of the ladle, yeah.”

  “So, it doesn't want to be taken away from the rest of it? Does that tell us something about whatever this guy did here?”

  Rafe shook his head. “Can you give me an action replay?”

  Ana considered saying something irreverent, but decided it was better not to, given how serious he was acting. She traced out a sigil and exhaled through it, the breath emerged from her throat as hot, black smoke that hung in the air, and waited for the command to spin back. She took control of it, and in an instant it began to take shape of the memories of the air, whipped back through time. The smoke stretched out as it adopted the outlines of all the market traders and customers that had run for the doors and exited.

  “Keep going,” Rafe muttered, which resulted in a glare from Ana that indicated that was exactly what she was doing, and he should shut the hell up.

  As the re-enactment span back, darkness came over the entire expanse of the market, and when it cleared, a man of shadows had something from the water shoot into his hand, the hand went into his coat, and a bunch of giant homunculi shadows appeared around him. “Stop,” Rafe grunted. “Forward again, to where he throws the thing in. . .”

  Ana did as instructed with a sigh, as that was exactly what she was going to do, without the damn instruction. This whole 'favour' for Slugtrough appeared to be making Rafe crabby, and she was not at all amused by how grumpy he was being.

  He stepped close to the smoky representation of the man who stood at the water's edge. He was hiding something in his coat, whatever caused the waters to go black, Rafe reckoned. He tried to make out the man's face.

  “Want more smoke in him?” Ana asked, hesitantly.

  Rafe nodded. “Thank you,” he muttered, suddenly all too aware that he had been being rude.

  Ana pulled the smoke from the rest of the room and fed it into the man's face, as she tried to make it more solid to allow Rafe to identify him.

  “Play it slow,” he said. “Please.”

  She watched Rafe's eyes narrow as he watched the smoke slip and slide, features shrunk and grew, thinned and widened.

  “He's shrouded.”

  “Well of course he is. Who'd come in and ruin a perfectly good wellspring with their face out for the world to see?”

  Rafe nodded, and stood back as Ana played events on. The man pulled the coin from his coat and threw it into the water. As it hit the shadowy representation of the fountain's surface in slow motion, darkness instantly filled the room.

  “In this instance,” Ana asked, blinded by the smoke that had filled their vision, “all this black is light, right?”

  Rafe nodded, then realised she couldn't see the nod. “Yeah. You can disperse it now. . .”

  She did as instructed. “So, you know what we're dealing with?”

  He shook his head. “Some kind of ritual, maybe.”

  “To what end?”

  “That's the question, isn't it. . .”

  “You think he's going to hit all the churches? Or, at least the five that are part of the pentagram?”

  “Pentacle.”

  “Really? You think now is the time to be pedantic?”

  “The streets around the churches make a circle, so it's a pentacle not a pentagram―”

  “Like I said, pedantry not necessary.”

  “The water not wanting to leave the wellspring makes it feel like it's being held in some kind of stasis. . .”

  “Until he hits all five of them?”

  Rafe nodded, as his eyes searched the floor, and he tried to work out what kind of grand ritual required that much power wielded, let alone focussed.

  “So, he's hit two so far. . . the rest will be on high alert, the Circle will be guarding them, right?”

  “From what Slugtrough said, the guy got in and out of the prison with zero casualties. . . that's about as highly warded a place can get without it being the damn Circle itself. But their version of 'high alert' might not be enough to stop him. . . ”

  “And you think we can?”

  Rafe caught her eye, a smile breaking through the stern
expression on his brow. “I think you can.”

  Chapter 7

  Active investigation

  As they walked back towards the door to Spitalfields, Rafe dialled Tali and looped Ana into the call.

  “What!” she grunted in both their peripheries.

  “Are you op'ing this wellspring thing?”

  “Oh gods, how the hell did you hear about it?”

  “Slugtrough.”

  “Gods dammit! He was ordered not to tell a damn soul.”

  “Really?” Ana scoffed. “You guys thought Slugtrough was going to take an order?”

  “Hoped would be more accurate. . . don't exactly need word of this spreading.”

  “We won't tell a soul,” Rafe assured her. “Assuming you can, y'know, fill us in with some intel.”

  “Rafe, can you leave this one the hell alone, please. It's an active investigation. . .”

  “How's the investigation part of that going? You guys know anything about the coins yet?”

  Tali huffed. “What coins?”

  “The ones he's using the black up the waters,” Ana said, quickly deciding it best to rephrase her statement. “I don't mean 'black up' like, y'know, minstrels, but―”

  “She knows what you mean.”

  “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “Well then it seems we have intel you might need. . .”

  A long, heavy sigh rumbled through their heads as Tali gave in. “Fine. I'll put you in touch with the head operative. . . she'll tell you what she can about the shadowman, but you've got to promise me you'll tell her every damn thing you know, okay?”

  Rafe and Ana agreed, and took the door back to Spitalfields. This 'favour' for Slugtrough was starting to feel like it was going to take up a hell of a lot more time than they wanted to spend working pro bono for someone they had no affection for.

  Chapter 8

  Not evil, just shadow

  The pair of freelancers doored through to a cafe in Kensington, Ana took the lead and sat down with all confidence at a table opposite a tall, muscular woman.